The Countess of Arran

The Countess of Arran, who has died aged 94, was reckoned the “fastest woman
on water” and subsequently the “fastest granny on water” when, in 1980, she
reached 103mph on Lake Windermere in a rocket-like craft called Skean-Dhu,
an achievement that earned her the highest accolade in powerboating, the
Segrave Trophy.

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Lady Arran

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Lady Arran at the helm of her powerboat Hopscotch off Cowes, Isle of Wight, in 1997Photo: REUTERS

3:12PM BST 09 Jun 2013

Although an unlikely champion powerboater, in October 1971, at the age of 53, Lady Arran followed in the wake of her hero Donald Campbell, racing her speedboat Highland Fling across Windermere in a hailstorm to lift the Class 1 record to 85.63mph. In her next 12 races, contending against all comers, she won three times and was never placed lower than third. In 1979, at the helm of her 26ft powerboat Skean-Dhu, she set a new Class II world record of 93mph.

Described by Harold Macmillan as the prettiest girl he had ever seen, she had married Sir Arthur (Kattendyke Strange David Archibald) “Boofy” Gore in 1937. In 1958 he succeeded his brother to become the 8th Earl of Arran and became an active member of the House of Lords. A passionate advocate of homosexual rights, he thrice introduced a Sexual Offences Bill, and also campaigned for the protection of badgers.

But “Boofy” Arran became best known in the 1960s for his weekly column in the London Evening News (where he was sometimes billed as “The Earl You Love To Hate”). This ran until 1978, when he suffered a stroke, a misfortune he blamed on his daily intake of a half-bottle of champagne before lunch.

While Fiona Arran pursued her powerboat interests, “Boofy” escaped in a car sent by the newspaper to write his column in peace, often musing about the wildlife in and around their remarkable home, Pimlico, near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire.

For few would have guessed that Lady Arran, invariably arriving on any maritime scene in a Colquhoun tartan cap set at a jaunty angle, kept a sizeable menagerie there. Wallabies bounced around the pinewoods, while pot-bellied pigs, llamas and alpacas, caged birds (including a macaw which volunteered rude comments on proceedings, and others that uttered further expletives), horses, a fox and assorted dogs completed a bustling scene. The family wore gumboots in the house to fend off their cete (brood) of ankle-nipping badgers.

Lady Arran always called her current favourite badger Rosie. A succession of these creatures visited, and left a mark on, the smartest houses in England. “Nobody but Fiona would have carried this off,” remarked a friend.

Drawn as ever to the lochside, she kept a small house on the Isle of Inchconnachan on Loch Lomond. She boated the loch while her badgers lived beneath the veranda, chasing people hurrying to the jetty.

Meanwhile, Fiona Arran continued to win competitions, eventually completing the Round Britain offshore race, a demanding event even for the fit young men who made up the other contestants.

She often disembarked black and blue, after she and her navigator had been flung around like dice in a cup. One exclaimed: “The Lady only has two speeds — flat out, and stop!” Asked why she did it, she said simply: “For Scotland”.

Fiona Arran was also a painter. Her pictures were rich in atmosphere and feeling, and in due course there was an exhibition in St James’s. It was almost as if she could do anything she set her mind to: from the water she took to dry land and phaeton-racing. Prince Philip was said to be amazed by his latest hell-for-leather competitor, and Fiona Arran was described as driving like Boadicea.

She made a late comeback on water, helping to design and construct a revolutionary electrically-propelled 15ft hydroplane, An Stradag (The Spark). On November 22 1989 she piloted the tiny craft to another record, achieving a silent and environmentally-friendly 50.825mph. She was then 71.

Fiona Bryde Colquhoun was born on July 20 1918, the daughter of Sir Iain Colquhoun, 7th Bt of Luss, a war hero and explorer. Her mother, Dinah Tennant, was a champion golfer. Brought up on the banks of Loch Lomond, and educated locally, Fiona recalled her first thrill in a powerboat in 1932 when, aged 13, she rode in Miss England III, a hydroplane powered by Rolls-Royce aero-engines, during its trial run on the loch.

On a summer’s evening just before the war, she was aboard her husband’s supercharged Mercedes car when it achieved 100mph down Oxford Street (“That was rather fun!”). During the war she was a driver with the Wrens, and subsequently put her mettle to the test on the newly-built M1. When a policeman stopped her — yet again — she said: “Fast? Get in, officer, and I’ll show you what fast is.”

In 1965, having witnessed the Paris Six Hours circuit marathon on the Seine from the yacht of the British naval architect, Commander Peter du Cane, she bet a friend that the following year she would be one of the starters. True to her word, in 1966 she was the sole woman competitor and finished 14th out of 90, in a monohulled boat named Badger I.

The name was significant. With her husband, Lady Arran had campaigned for the protection of badgers, and eventually helped to pilot the Badger Protection Bill through both Houses of Parliament. They even had a badger motif attached to the radiator of their Rolls-Royce.

Bored by circuit racing, Lady Arran soon progressed offshore. In Badger II, a 20ft Don Shead design, she quickly set a new speed record of 55mph for Class III offshore powerboats. For the 1970 season she was at the helm of Badger III, a Cougar catamaran.

She then turned to a young naval architect, Lorne Campbell, who designed a series of three-point hydroplanes in which Lady Arran competed in offshore races. Having broken the Class I record on Windermere in 1971, she lifted the Class D championship in 1976 in the 26ft Skean-Dhu (Gaelic for “dagger”).

Campbell next came up with Cael-na-Mara (“Song of the Sea”), a 30ft reverse three-pointer with three Mercury outboard engines on the back. But the craft’s performance disappointed, and Lady Arran reverted to Skean-Dhu, in which, in 1979, she set a new Class II world record of 93mph. On August 11 the following year she piloted the vessel, with its twin 225hp Mercury outboards, to 102.45mph on Windermere. She announced her retirement in 1981.

Her husband died in 1983. The elder of their two sons, the 9th Earl of Arran, survives her.